“Oh!” cried Lady Anstruthers, “how clever you are!  And you look so different, Betty.”

“Do I look stupid?” the dimple deepening.  “I must try to alter that.”

“Don’t try to alter your looks,” said Rosy.  “It is your looks that make you so—­so wonderful.  But usually women—­girls——­” Rosy paused.

“Oh, I have been trained,” laughed Betty.  “I am the spoiled daughter of a business man of genius.  His business is an art and a science.  I have had advantages.  He has let me hear him talk.  I even know some trifling things about stocks.  Not enough to do me vital injury—­but something.  What I know best of all,”—­her laugh ended and her eyes changed their look,—­“is that it is a blunder to think that beauty is not capital—­that happiness is not—­and that both are not the greatest assets in the scheme.  This,” with a wave of her hand, taking in all they saw, “is beauty, and it ought to be happiness, and it must be taken care of.  It is your home and Ughtred’s——­”

“It is Nigel’s,” put in Rosy.

“It is entailed, isn’t it?” turning quickly.  “He cannot sell it?”

“If he could we should not be sitting here,” ruefully.

“Then he cannot object to its being rescued from ruin.”

“He will object to—­to money being spent on things he does not care for.”  Lady Anstruthers’ voice lowered itself, as it always did when she spoke of her husband, and she indulged in the involuntary hasty glance about her.

“I am going to my room to take off my hat,” Betty said.  “Will you come with me?”

She went into the house, talking quietly of ordinary things, and in this way they mounted the stairway together and passed along the gallery which led to her room.  When they entered it she closed the door, locked it, and, taking off her hat, laid it aside.  After doing which she sat.

“No one can hear and no one can come in,” she said.  “And if they could, you are afraid of things you need not be afraid of now.  Tell me what happened when you were so ill after Ughtred was born.”

“You guessed that it happened then,” gasped Lady Anstruthers.

“It was a good time to make anything happen,” replied Bettina.  “You were prostrated, you were a child, and felt yourself cast off hopelessly from the people who loved you.”

“Forever!  Forever!” Lady Anstruthers’ voice was a sharp little moan.  “That was what I felt—­that nothing could ever help me.  I dared not write things.  He told me he would not have it—­that he would stop any hysterical complaints—­that his mother could testify that he behaved perfectly to me.  She was the only person in the room with us when—­when——­”

“When?” said Betty.

Lady Anstruthers shuddered.  She leaned forward and caught Betty’s hand between her own shaking ones.